


Kilesa

by Snowgrouse



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-07
Updated: 2008-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:47:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowgrouse/pseuds/Snowgrouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that the Doctor is alone, he has more time to himself, more time to wander around the TARDIS. A reflective piece on the (in)transience of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kilesa

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Last of the Time Lords. References The Time Monster. Thanks to 45eugenia and animagiblender for betaing.

  
The Doctor's TARDIS has so many rooms he often forgets about their existence entirely; like treasured books that used to make you cry with laughter, ending up gathering dust on a shelf. Sometimes, he forgets for months, years, decades; sometimes he forgets completely.

Sometimes the rooms remember him, and he finds himself stumbling through a door he doesn't recall was there as the TARDIS rearranges herself again. Often, he wonders if she does it deliberately, to guide him to what he needs. Information, equipment, perhaps even solace.

These days, he finds himself wandering the TARDIS more often, new corridors and paths and bridges appearing wherever he chooses to cast his eyes. When he finds a room that suits his mood, he often lingers, finds things to touch with his hands. One day, it's the sturdy, gilded frame of a Baroque chair. On another, it's a painting from Deva Loka, composed entirely out of sound, the colours and the melodies changing when you run your fingers across its surface. Today, it's an astrolabe he built when he was sixteen, but he soon lets the device slip from his hands. It makes him think of the present, of the dead, and that's not what he wants.

The rooms he likes the most are, predictably, those furnished in a Victorian style and quintessentially English, although if you asked the Doctor, he would only insist they were timeless. Today, he's pottering about in a small study--ridiculously cramped, stuffed full of books on creaking shelves. He has barely any room to squeeze between the shelves, the desk, and the chairs, stumbling on yet more books and bits of paper in varying stages of yellowing. He knocks over an inkwell in the process, and even that makes him smile, using his jacket to mop the stains up--well, he has several of those jackets, and this one was getting a bit threadbare anyway. He loves the scent of old ink--that, and everything in this room; books, worn leather and wood, the sunlight coming in through the windows.

The TARDIS is rather good at creating an artificial landscape and light outside, lots of green grass and drifting clouds, not too bright, but not too rainy either. The perfect English summer day. She also takes care of the houseplants, because _someone_ has to. The Doctor cheerfully ignores the part of his mind that's nagging about such things. He picks up a small watering can and babbles to the plants as he tends to them, going over old times with the begonias, apologising to the bowl of petunias--no hard feelings about the whale, eh?--and twirls his fingers playfully around the ivy.

When he comes to the small glass dome, he grows quiet. This plant doesn't need watering, doesn't even need sunlight what with the stasis field the dome contains. Yet the Doctor likes to keep it in the light, another one of his sentimental quirks. Inside the dome, in an earthen pot, is a daisy. A simple weed, nothing as exciting as a legendary tulip that would fetch a fortune in a Dutch auction house. But to the Doctor, the daisy is endlessly fascinating. Like he's often done before, he draws in a chair, sits in it backwards, with his arms and chin pillowed on the back. Staying there for a long while, contemplating.

It may not be the exact same daisy the old hermit showed him, but what matters is that it is from that same mountainside, the same kind of flower, and it is his own. As a boy, he carefully lifted this flower out of the ground himself, with plenty of soil still attached. He kept the daisy beside his bedroom window, and learned how to build a stasis dome just to keep it intact, to keep it alive. What matters is that he missed that flower when he left Gallifrey, enough to sneak back one day just to pick it up again. He remembers moving quietly so as not to awaken that younger, more innocent version of himself sleeping so soundly, the boy who would forget about the flower until Atlantis. How he was still tiptoeing when he got inside the TARDIS, Jo asleep as well, having dozed off on a sofa, still wearing Minoan dress, smiling in her sleep.

The Doctor smiles, too.

The next day, there's a spring in the Doctor's step as he walks to the console room for his usual morning check-up. He's wriggling into a fresh new pinstriped jacket, whistling as he goes--oh, whistling, that must be a good sign. Why, he even thinks he might be cheering up a little; it's no use being such a miserable bugger anyway--he's spent far too much time moping, recently. Life goes on, he's fresh from the shower, has had a splendid breakfast with several cups of perfectly brewed tea (even if he says so himself), and he practically dances as he turns the last corner into the console room.

And his hearts stop. Both of them.

Right there, on the floor, sitting cross-legged, wearing his winter coat and gloves, is the Master. Smiling up at him from where he balances his chin on his hands, boyish and malicious, not a hair on his head untouched.

The Doctor's hearts pick up, and they're pounding. He should move, and why in the bloody hell did the Cloister Bell not ring, this is not good, not good, and he should make a run for it--and oh, now the Master gets up, and starts walking casually towards him--

Something white flutters between and out of the Master's hands, and the Master begins to recite, voice dripping with mockery:

"He loves me... he loves me not... he loves me... he loves me not... "

The Master plucks all but the last petal from the Doctor's daisy--and the Doctor _knows_ it's his daisy, from the way it's already started to wilt and flicker into nothingness. The petals disappear into thin air before they hit the floor, the stasis broken, time swallowing up the anomaly. The Master stops, and makes a face at the last petal that would've been a "loves me", as if the flower had personally insulted him. The Master tosses the stem to the floor, and now he's so close the Doctor can smell winter on him, the scent of frost, as if he's just come in from the cold.

There's a soft laugh, a sharp movement from the Master, and his hands close around the Doctor's throat, _squeezing_. The Master's lips are cold, his tongue hot as he slides it into the Doctor's mouth, and all the Doctor can think of is _alive, alive_. Even as he feels his respiratory bypass kicking in, even as darkness reaches out to him, pulling him close.

 _Alive._   



End file.
